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Tea and Cider Wassail

This was fantastic! One of the best ciders I have ever tried. I might be adding tea to all my ciders from here on out. It was just so good. Warmed the bones 🙂

I will admit the reason I decided to make the wassail was because it is called a wassail. I mean really? Wassail! Now I had to do a little research to see if this is a REAL wassail and what wassail even really means. Well, here is your brief history lesson-courtesy of Wikipedia– the Middle English translation of wassail literally means good health or be you healthy. The drink wassail is a hot mulled cider traditionally drunk while wassailing. Wassailing was an ancient southern English drinking ritual intended to ensure a good cider apple harvest the following year. Historically wassail was made with sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and topped with slices of toast.

So my recipe is similar to the original wassail. Apple juice mulled with sugar and cinnamon. Next time maybe I will add ginger and nutmeg. Probably not adding the bread. But that’s just me.

2 thoughts on “Tea and Cider Wassail”

When I was in high school I was a part of the community madrigal dinner. Shouting “Wassail!” was equivalent to the english “Cheers!” or the German “Brost!”. We also had a wassailing song that was a ton of fun!